Tag: palestine

Israel Doesn’t Care About the Captives. It Always Planned To Reboot the Genocide

What excuses has Israel given for renewing the genocide:

1. Israel says it is trying to force Hamas to release the captives in Gaza.

Yet, as we know from those already released, the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza only increases the chances the captives will be killed. There is no plausible scenario in which dropping US-supplied 2,000lb bombs across Gaza makes any Israeli held in the enclave safer or brings them home sooner.

In any case, there was a known and easy way for Israel to get the last of the captives back. They were due to be freed in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, already well past its implementation date. But weeks ago Israel decided to tear up the agreement it had signed and impose new terms in which the rest of the captives would have to be returned – and without Israel either ceasing its fire or withdrawing from the enclave, as it had agreed to do.

What Israel’s return to genocide shows is that the Israeli government would rather kill the remaining captives – vaporising them with Trump’s latest shipment of 2,000lb bombs – than either make a concession to secure their release or place any limitation on its ability to slaughter the people of Gaza.

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White House Greenlit New Israeli Strikes On Gaza, Breaking Of Ceasefire

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has said Tuesday that over 400 people were killed overnight and into the morning by Israeli airstrikes following the collapse of the fragile two-month ceasefire.

Local officials say the death toll is expected to climb higher through the day as many are still buried under the rubble. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders desribed, “We woke up, at around 2am local time, to 20 minutes of airstrikes and heavy artillery, just like the past 15 months of war.”

The statement further said, “We are appalled and outraged by these new unacceptable massacres of civilians.” But Israel has blamed Hamas for the truce’s collapse, also as dozens of Israeli captives (including bodies of the deceased) still remain in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that “Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military force.” He blasted group’s “repeated refusal” to release more hostages.

Israel’s military claimed overnight that Hamas’ highest-ranking security official, Mahmoud Abu Wafah, was killed in the strikes. Bombs pummeled the territory every “five, six seconds” according to a Unicef official.

The Trump administration gave the greenlight for the fresh wave of Israeli attacks. “The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Monday night Fox News interview, just as the bombs were flying. And meanwhile, this somewhat strangely timed headline on Tuesday has hit:

The US reportedly agreed to an Egyptian proposal to rebuild Gaza without Hamas, with a local price tag of $50bn.

Hamas has blamed Israel for what it says was the unilateral overturning of the ceasefire agreement. Trump has for weeks been warning that all “hell” could be visited upon Hamas if it didn’t immediately return all of the remaining hostages.

Leavitt acknowledged this in her commentary to Fox: “As President Trump has made it clear – Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose,” she said.

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“The Gates of Hell Will Open in Gaza” — Ceasefire Ends as Israel Launches Extensive Strikes on Hamas Terror Strongholds in Gaza for Refusing to Release Hostages

In a bold and necessary move to protect its citizens and sovereignty, Israel has launched a series of decisive airstrikes targeting Hamas terror strongholds within the Gaza Strip.

This action comes in direct response to Hamas’s blatant refusal to release Israeli hostages and its continuous threats to Israeli security.

Early Tuesday morning, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) executed extensive airstrikes across Gaza, marking the most significant military action since the ceasefire agreement in January.

“In accordance with the political echelon, the IDF and ISA are currently conducting extensive strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF wrote on X.

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Iranian Intel Ship Sunk By American Forces During Gaza Surprise Attacks

It looks like forces in the Trump administration pushing for war with Iran are going to get their way.

The Iranian intel ship Zagros (SIGINT) was sunk by U.S. forces amid wide-ranging strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip by Israel happening simultaneously.

The ship was commissioned only two months ago.

Iran’s navy received its first signals intelligence ship on Wednesday, semi-official Tasnim news organisation reported, a few days after the country’s army took delivery of 1,000 new drones.

The Zagros is a new category of military vessel equipped with electronic sensors and the ability to intercept cyber-operations and conduct intelligence monitoring, Tasnim said.

“The Zagros signals intelligence ship will be the watchful eye of Iran’s navy in the seas and oceans,” Navy Commander Shahram Irani said, reported Reuters.

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Suspended for Pro-Palestine Speech: My Statement on Yale Law School’s Embrace of AI-Generated Smears

The following statement was originally published on Helyeh Doutaghi’s account on the X platform on March 12, 2025. Last week, Doutaghi was placed on administrative leave by Yale Law School following an AI-generated article falsely accusing her of being a “terrorist” over connections to Palestine advocacy organizations.  (Reprinted from Mondoweiss.)

My name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages with Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions. I have specifically examined the mechanisms and consequences of economic warfare on Iran, as well as the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield U.S. military operations from accountability. On October 1, 2023, I was appointed Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and joined the team. I also held the position of Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School (YLS), a non-tenured faculty role without teaching responsibilities.

On the morning of March 3rd, I was notified of an online report about me. An obscure AI-powered right-wing Zionist platform called “Jewish Onliner” published a report falsely accusing me of being a “terrorist”. Rather than defend me, the Yale Law School moved within less than 24 hours of learning about the report to place me on leave.

I was given only a few hours’ notice by the administration to attend an interrogation based on far-right AI-generated allegations against me, while enduring a flood of online harassment, death threats, and abuse by Zionist trolls, exacerbating ongoing unprecedented distress and complications both at work and at home. I endured all of this while fasting, and my request for religious accommodations during Ramadan was dismissed. Just a few hours later, YLS placed me on leave, revoked my IT access – including email – and banned me from campus. I was afforded no due process and no reasonable time to consult with my attorney.

Rather than investigate the source of these allegations first, the nation’s “top law school” accepted them at face value, and shifted the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, treating me, prima facie, as guilty until proven otherwise. Whether Yale Law School’s attorneys knowingly relied on AI-fabricated claims or simply chose willful ignorance remains unanswered.

To conduct the interrogation, Yale Law School retained David Ring from the law firm Wiggin and Dana – an attorney whose public profile includes “Israel” listed as a “service” he provides and whose portfolio boasts advising “the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies.” Twice appointed by the U.S. State Department as a Special Compliance Officer, his career is deeply embedded in the very industries that sustain genocide and war crimes in Palestine. When I raised my concerns about the potential conflict of interests posed by his participation in this process, YLS dismissed them, stating there was “no concern with his ability to conduct a fair interview.” It is reprehensible that YLS would appoint a counsel who profits from the machinery of Palestinian death to “interview” an employee about their public anti-genocide and pro-Palestine positions.

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US & Israel Ask East African Countries To Resettle Palestinians

The United States and Israel have asked three East African governments to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians from Gaza, according to US and Israeli officials who spoke to The Associated Press (AP).

On Friday, AP reported that the US and Israel began discussing the forced displacement of Palestinians last month with the governments of Sudan, Somalia and its breakaway region Somaliland.

This comes after US President Donald Trump suggested in February that the US could “take over” the Gaza Strip and expel Palestinians. His declaration prompted Egypt to draft an alternative plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, which has since been adopted by Arab leaders.

The $53bn Egyptian plan rejects the displacement of Palestinians and instead focuses on redeveloping the enclave without depopulating it. 

Earlier this week, Trump appeared to signal a retreat from the proposed mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. When asked about it during a meeting in the White House with Irish leader Micheal Martin, he said: “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians from Gaza.”

However, AP’s report suggests that the US may have responded to the rejection of its displacement plan by Arab governments last month by looking further afield.

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The Soviet-Palestinian Lie

The recent discovery that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), was a KGB spy in Damascus in 1983, was discarded by many in the mainstream media as a “historical curiosity” — except that the news inconveniently came out at the time that President Vladimir Putin was trying to organize new talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Predictably, the Palestinian Authority immediately dismissed the news. Fatah official Nabil Shaath denied that Abbas was ever a KGB operative, and called the claim a “smear campaign.”

The discovery, far from being a “historical curiosity,” is an aspect of one of many pieces in the puzzle of the origins of 20th and 21st century Islamic terrorism. Those origins are almost always obfuscated and obscured in ill-concealed attempts at presenting a particular narrative about the causes of contemporary terrorism, while decrying all and any evidence to the contrary as “conspiracy theories.”

There is nothing conspiratorial about the latest revelation. It comes from a document in the Mitrokhin archives at the Churchill Archives Center at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Vasily Mitrokhin was a former senior officer of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence service, who was later demoted to KGB archivist. At immense risk to his own life, he spent 12 years diligently copying secret KGB files that would not otherwise have become available to the public (the KGB foreign intelligence archives remain sealed from the public, despite the demise of the Soviet Union). When Mitrokhin defected from the Russia in 1992, he brought the copied files with him to the UK. The declassified parts of the Mitrokhin archives were brought to the public eye in the writings of Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew, who co-wrote The Mitrokhin Archive (published in two volumes) together with the Soviet defector. Mitrokhin’s archives led, among other things, to the discovery of many KGB spies in the West and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the history of the full extent of the KGB’s influence and disinformation operations is not nearly as well-known as it should be, considering the immense influence that the KGB wielded on international affairs. The KGB conducted hostile operations against NATO as a whole, against democratic dissent within the Soviet bloc, and set in motion subversive events in Latin America and the Middle East, which resonate to this day.

The KGB, furthermore, was an extremely active player in the creation of so-called liberation movements in Latin America and in the Middle East, movements that went on to engage in lethal terrorism — as documented in, among other places, The Mitrokhin Archive, as well as in the books and writings of Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Communist official to defect from the former Soviet bloc.

Pacepa was deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service and a personal advisor to Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu before he defected to the United States in 1978. Pacepa worked with the CIA to bring down communism for more than 10 years; the agency described his cooperation as “an important and unique contribution to the United States.”

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Columbia University Folds After Trump Imposes Federal Funding Freeze — Suspends and Expels Students Involved in Anti-Israel Protests

It seems like Columbia University is finally getting the message.

The New York University, long considered one of the world’s leading academic institutions, has announced it will suspend, expel, and even revoke the degrees of students involved in last year’s anti-Israel protests.

The sanctions were confirmed by the Columbia University Judicial Board on Thursday, which said their extent would depend on the severity of their behaviors.

“The outcomes issued by the UJB are based on its evaluation of the severity of behaviors at these events and prior disciplinary actions,” the university said in a statement sent to the entire school community.

“These outcomes are the result of following the thorough and rigorous processes laid out in the Rules of University Conduct in our statutes, which include investigations, hearings and deliberations.”

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No Other Land Won an Oscar. Miami Beach’s Mayor Is Trying To Evict a Movie Theater for Screening It

The mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, is trying to terminate the lease of a movie theater for screening No Other Land, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Miami Herald reported that Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution to terminate the lease of O Cinema, an independent film theater that rents space from the city, and discontinue more than $60,000 in promised grant funding. The legislation comes after Meiner tried to pressure the theater to cancel the screening.

Florida civil rights groups and First Amendment experts say such government retaliation against the theater for the content of the films it chooses to screen would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

“Simply put, the First Amendment does not allow the government to discriminate based on viewpoint or to retaliate against anyone for their speech,” says Daniel Tilley, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. “Pulling funding from an independent, community-based cinema under these circumstances is patently unconstitutional. The government does not get to pick and choose which viewpoints the public is allowed to hear, however controversial some might find them.”

The Miami Beach mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

However, in a newsletter to Miami Beach residents earlier this week, Meiner wrote: “I am a staunch believer in free speech. But normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach, after O Cinema conceded the ‘concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,’ is unjust to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.”

On March 5, Meiner sent O Cinema a letter on official city letterhead expressing outrage at the cinema’s decision to screen the film, which documents the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.

“Here in Miami Beach, our City has adopted a strong policy of support for the State of Israel in its struggle to defend itself and its residents against attacks by the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah,” the letter read. “Airing performances of the one-sided, inaccurate film ‘No Other Land’ at a movie theater facility owned by the City and operated by O Cinema is disappointing.”

This is flagrant government jawboning—an attempt to use the mayor’s bully pulpit and the implicit threat of government action to cow the theater into self-censorship.

O Cinema initially complied.

“Due to the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric, we have decided to withdraw the film from our programming,” Vivian Marthell, CEO of O Cinema, wrote to Meiner the following day. “This film has exposed a rift which makes us unable to do the thing we’ve always sought out to do which is to foster thoughtful conversations about cinematic works.”

However, the theater then reversed course and told the Miami Herald it would continue the screenings after all.

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Radical ‘Free Palestine’ Extremist Targets Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Sister with Bomb Threat

A deranged “Free Palestine” extremist attempted to terrorize the family of DEI U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett by threatening her sister with a mailbox bomb.

According to WYFF, citing the Charleston Police Department, authorities responded around 9:30 a.m. Monday after receiving an alarming bomb threat directed at Amanda Coney Williams.

The threat, sent via email to an employee of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office late Sunday night, detailed an alleged homemade explosive device that was supposedly placed in Williams’ mailbox.

The email read:

“Using a 1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipe, end caps, a kitchen timer, some wires, metal clips and homemade black powder, I’ve constructed a pipe bomb which I recently placed in Amy Coney Barrett’s sister’s mailbox at her home in Charleston, SC.

The device’s detonation will be triggered as soon as the mailbox is next opened. Free Palestine!”

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